Ahrcanum

Video Killed the Radio Star is a song by the British group Buggles and was released in 1979. It celebrates the golden days of radio, talking of a singer whose career is cut short by television.  It was the first music video shown on MTV in North America when the music channel debuted on August 1, 1981, at 12:10 A.M.  Obama would have been about 20 years old. [If I saw his birth certificate I could tell you exactly how old he was -but alas, it has never been shown to the public-only a copy of a COLB. 

Leave it to Obama to kill what is left of radio listenership.   With an, in your face- I don’t need the radio attitude toward Rush Limbaugh, Obama continues to capitalize on the Internet and “for the first time, the weekly Democratic address has been released as a web video rather than the traditional radio address. http://change.gov/newsroom/entry/your_weekly_address_from_the_president_elect/  and at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zd8f9Zqap6U By posting the address on You Tube we can see that more than 550,000 people have viewed it.  Too bad the comments and ratings have been disabled.

His campaign on the net was masterful and again we are witness to the landscape of change in communications.  Communicating will change even further this winter when TV will only be broadcast under the digital domain.  February 17, 2009, all full-power broadcast television stations in the United States will stop broadcasting on analog airwaves and begin broadcasting only in digital. The FCC claims digital broadcasting will allow stations to offer improved picture and sound quality and additional channels. http://www.dtv.gov/ 

That means that people who use an antenna to watch TV will likely get no more service after Feb. 17. The exceptions are if the TV is a digital TV, TV service comes from cable or another paid source or you bought one of those digital converter boxes (two $40 coupons are available at www.DTV2009.gov). See my “Guide to the 2009 Digital TV transition.”  What no one fails to mention is the jackpot each of the license holders has been given.  http://unusualmusic.livejournal.com/293881.html  writes  “Although the airwaves are the property of the public under US law, and broadcasters receive their licenses from the FCC only on the condition that they serve the public interest, neither Congress nor the FCC, have attached any public service or public interest requirement to the thousands of new DTV channels that current broadcasters will receive. And current broadcasters, according to the deal worked out by Congress and the FCC back in the 1990s, are the only ones upon whom the new stations made possible by DTV will be bestowed. They’re in. Congress and the FCC, in their wisdom didn’t think local governments, schools, colleges, libraries, unions, community organizations, local churches, blacks, Latinos or females deserved a shot at any of the thousands of new DTV channels. They’re out. That’s it and that’s all. “

Since airwaves are free we are now being held hostage to paying for cable in order to receive good reception but cable broadcasters are not the only one to actually use cable.    Comcast, AT&T, Sprint, and the others all make use of cable but fail to talk about all the dormant dark fiber laid in the 1990’s cris-crossing the country that is not being used. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_fiber  We see companies charging and limiting band with, capping usage, and charging for bytes of traffic to boost revenue.  Another major media shift has been underway for some time regarding CNN, who is underway to surpass The Associated Press, Reuters, and UPI as a news source available to the media.  “So in addition to cablecasting, web casting and mobile casting (its big three destination plays), it [sic- CNN] figures it can make some money offering the same content to other news outlets. Call it syndication, call it distribution or call it, in the old parlance it has chosen, the CNN Wire.    http://www.contentbridges.com/2008/11/cnn-changes-the-wire-game.html ” I call it a big monopoly.

http://www.techpresident.com/ reports that The Obama-Biden transition team has just named the staunchly pro-Internet Susan Crawford its co-lead in the review of the FCC, Federal Communications Commission.   Crawford, a leading expert on communications policy, is the founder of OneWebDay, called “an environmental movement for the Internet ecosystem.” She was, until recently, also a member of the board of directors of ICANN, the organization charged with overseeing some of the Internet’s operations.* Here more of her thoughts here http://onewebday.org/?page_id=310 and her thoughts on the “man in the middle”- the government’s role in monitoring the Internet.

Seeing as Al Gore invented the Internet is should seem only fitting that a government entity should monitor it, right?  ROFL.  http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-151059.html notes that programs more intrusive than Carnivore may be in use and in  in violation of the Wiretap Act and the 4th Amendment to the Constitution. ” Instead of recording only what a particular suspect is doing, agents conducting investigations appear to be assembling the activities of thousands of Internet users at a time into massive databases, according to current and former officials. That database can subsequently be queried for names, e-mail addresses or keywords. ”

Justice Department’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section is a busy place.  http://www.scmagazineus.com/Study-Internet-service-providers-facing-more-larger-threats/article/120828/  Internet service providers (ISPs) are facing more security threats, while attacks are becoming larger and more sophisticated.
That finding is from Arbor Networks’ Worldwide Infrastructure Security Report, The report compiles survey responses from 66 lead security engineers from North America, South America, Europe and Asia. They were asked questions relating to Internet security threats and engineering challenges occurring between August 2007 and July 2008.The scale of attacks have been growing steadily since 2001, but this year’s largest reported distributed denial-of- service (DDoS) attack reached 40 gigabytes per second against a single target, the report states.

[I]n a final statement that’s likely to send shivers down the spines of telecom company executives, she [Crawford] said that she believes Internet access is a “utility.”

Hic up, most utilities are taxable.

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